On a busy election night in 1996, a neighborhood celebrates a native son’s victory. On one of its quieter streets, a lawyer is surveying some puzzling damage left after a break-in at his office.

On a deserted corner, a girl waits for a ride that never comes.

Welcome to Pleasantville, a Houston suburb born in post-World War II segregation, advertised “for Negro families of means and class.” Black residents have turned the area into a political powerhouse whose support any candidate with citywide aspirations has to have.

But times and the political landscape are changing, and folks will do desperate things to hang on to power — or to gain it.

Attica Locke’s second installment in the Jay Porter series finds our hero a hollowed-out man. His victory over Big Oil in 2009’s Black Water Rising is snarled in red tape, and his wife’s death has almost killed him. The only things he’s living for these days are his young son and teenage daughter, and those of you who have or have ever been a teenage daughter know that road’s not paved with hugs and glitter.

Porter is still trying to figure out why someone broke into his office and stole nothing when he’s called in to confer on the missing girl. The neighborhood powers want her found, of course, but they’re equally driven that her disappearance, after a day of handing out fliers, doesn’t tarnish their man’s campaign.

The thrills take a little while to come to a boil. When they do, like a pot of red beans, the ingredients that are tasty on their own blend deliciously.

The candidate’s campaign manager is a person of interest in the girl’s disappearance. His alibi is a buried family shame. The girl’s presence in the neighborhood has implications that may eventually reverberate on a national level.

Jay’s clients, unhappy at the lack of progress on their suit against the oil company, appear ready to jump ship.

Will all these pieces click together? Suffice it to say you’re in good hands with Locke, an Edgar Award nominee for Black Water Rising and winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for her second novel, The Cutting Season. She’s also a writer and producer of the Fox drama Empire.

Locke, a Houston native, knows her turf. She pulls you past gleaming office buildings inside the beltway, and into tiny neighborhood dives where blues are king, there’s killer ’cue out back, and you can get a Scotch at 10 in the morning without anyone raising an eyebrow.

Texas takes a special-guest-star role as Most Corrupt State in U.S. Politics.

This is a fun study on how political machinations at the local level can eventually swell into national ripples, tastily blended with a murder mystery. Bon appétit.